To hell and gone with the Dems

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The dispatch of Saddam Hussein's
sons to hell (unless Ol' Scratch turned
them away to preserve standards)
offers a grim preview of what we can
expect in the '04 presidential campaign.
Even Bill Clinton is covering his eyes.

Some of the embittered Democrats
can't bear it that George W. is getting
a lift, just when he needs it most, with
the deaths of Uday and Qusai.
Suddenly the war in Iraq and by
extension the larger war on Islamist
terror is back in razor-sharp focus.

John Kerry, the French-looking
pursuer of Howard Dean, and Dick
Gephardt, the subject earlier of an
all-points bulletin by the Missing
Persons Bureau, had just delivered
themselves of cranky critiques of
George W.'s stewardship of the war
when the news rumbled in from
Baghdad that Saddam's evil sons had
been slain in a shootout with American
troops. Timing, alas, is everything.

By the looks of the boys in the
post-mortem photographs, released
yesterday to reassure frightened Iraqis
that they are in fact still dead, the
virgins who awaited them in Islamist
paradise have very little to look forward
to. Uday and Qusai arrived in paradise
via a connecting flight from Paris with
faces that only embittered Democrats,
trembling at the prospect of four more
years of George W., could appreciate.

Here's a typical flight of fantasy from
one of the Web sites where Democrats
who were unable to raise the bus fare
home from Florida go to cry with each
other: "Doesn't a part of you wish that
Queasy and Duh-day were alive? I'll
admit that they're scum and rightfully
so, but anything that lands as even
more humiliation on W's grotesque
shriveled face is that much better. It's
sad, really, that as despicable as they
are, Saddam's family seems to be the
lesser of two evils when you compare
them to the wretched little
[unimaginative epithet] occupying the
White House and destroying America in
the process ... ."

But it's not just the loons and hayseeds marooned in
cyberspace without their meds. Some of the loons live among
us. Here's Rep. Charles Rangel of New York, a bulb about as
bright as it gets in the modern Democratic Party, telling Fox
News: "We have a law on the books that the United States
should not be assassinating anybody. When you personalize
a war and when you're saying that you're killing someone's
kids, then they in turn would think that they kill somebody.
How can you get so much satisfaction out of the fact that two
bums have been killed? We got bums all over the world and
some in the United States. I personally don't get any
satisfaction that it takes, you know, 200,000 troops, 250,000
troops, to knock off two bums."

You might expect a distinguished member of Congress,
even one fretting about Saddam's "kids," to have a greater
command of basic facts, such as (1) there is no law against
political assassination, merely an executive order, signed by
Gerald Ford, and subject to repeal with the stroke of George
W.'s pen, (2) these were not assassinations, but the kind of
killings that are perfectly legitimate in a war, and (3) the
elimination of the Hussein "kids" required only a squad of
soldiers. Far fewer, in fact, than the number of constituted
officers who went after the James gang or Bonnie and Clyde,
with no disrespect intended to the James gang or to Bonnie
or even Clyde. The Allies landed at Omaha Beach in 1944
without a search warrant, if the Hon. Mr. Rangel seeks
another tangent to fly off on.

This is mindless hip-hop that frightens the shrewder
Democrats, who understand that it's lethal, but not to
George W. and his Republicans. Firing up the base is
important, and every pol understands that candidates pander
to the fringes in the primary stage of the campaign, but
voters hardly have to be reminded that the suicide urge that
Democrats have to keep in permanent restraint is the urge to
fall on the swords of the nation's enemies. Nobody in
Poughkeepsie, Topeka or Boise is eager to take the trouble to
figure out whether George W. should have cited British
intelligence, or whether Saddam wanted to eat his Niger
yellowcake and have it, too. They do understand that it was a
lot of ado about not very much. Bill Clinton, of all people, is
clear about that, even if a lot of his old constituents aren't:
"We should be pulling for America on this," he told CNN's
Larry King the other night. "... You know, everybody makes
mistakes when they are president. I mean, you can't make as
many calls as you have to make without messing up once in a
while. The thing we ought to be focused on is what is the
right thing to do now. That's what I think."

Good advice, particularly on the eve of an election year,
from the man who knows more than almost anyone about
maintaining political viability within the system.